SortStack #3203 — 2035-03-17
By duration · Order from shortest to longest.
- A mantis shrimp throwing its famous punch 3 ms
The strike accelerates like a bullet and creates collapsing cavitation bubbles that briefly flash with light and heat — prey gets hit twice by one punch.
- An amber traffic light before it turns red 4 sec
Amber phases are tuned to road speed — typically 3 seconds in town and up to 6 on fast roads, calculated from braking distance physics.
- The Battle of Leipzig, Napoleon's 'Battle of the Nations' 4 days
With around 600,000 soldiers from over a dozen nations, the 1813 clash was Europe's largest battle until the First World War.
- Munich's Oktoberfest 17 days
Despite the name, most of it happens in September — and visitors drink roughly six to seven million litres of beer before it ends.
- The Romanov dynasty's rule over Russia 304 years
It began with a 16-year-old reluctantly accepting the throne in 1613 and ended 304 years later with Nicholas II's abdication in 1917.
- The time since humans invented the wheel 5.5K years
Potter's wheels came before wheels for transport — and the oldest wooden wheel ever found, near Ljubljana, is about 5,150 years old.